TEXTS TEEMING WITH TRUTH___MAP TWO___EPHESIANS 5:23-25

We've established that Paul is NOT talking about authority in this passage. [See last post.] The only way anyone can inject authority here is by reading it into the word "head." But that's a modern meaning to that word and doesn't adequately reveal the intention of Paul's words at all. Had Paul intended "authority" as we moderns see present in the word "head," or if he had meant the "boss" or the one "in charge," he could have easily said that with the Greek word "arche." [Pronounced ar-Kay] Actually it was a popular word that was used to describe two things. One___it meant "importance" or "power." We see this when it js a prefix to our words like "archangel" or "archbishop." Even someone being your "archenemy" would show it. That's "head" meaning first in importance or power. But, second, it meant "beginnings" or "point of origin." This would be seen in words like "archives" or "archetype." We could also use "head" in this way by saying "headwaters" of a river or the "beginnings" of a river like the Mississippi river.

But there was in Paul's day a second Greek word which is also translated "head." That word is "Kephale." [Pronounced Kef-a-lay]  It is a word which, of course, means a "body part," but also can mean "foremost"in terms of position.  "Kephale" can also mean "source" like the "headwaters" as seen by Chrysostom using it that way in some of his writings. Yet, and this is important, it is NEVER USED to mean "boss" or "leader" in the "authority" sense.

So, what does "head" mean here in Ephesians 5:23 if not "boss?" It means the guy who is NOT a general of a commanding officer, but perhaps it's referring to the husband as a "point-man" [out in front] who is there to help others who are depending on him. But, perhaps, it was intended to refer to the source or beginnings of it all as Christ certainly is that for the Church and the man was that seeing the woman was taken from the man. [I personally lean toward the latter.] But it is NEVER used as one with a "superior rank" as in" head of a family or clan" by ANYONE in scripture or other Greek writings. Authority is NOT the intended subject here at all.

That's technical enough I would think. I've read tons on this text from scholars all the way from Laurie Fascullo, who would hesitate to call herself a scholar I'm thinking, [but I do] to Grudem, with scores of people in between, and have come away with my opinion on the whole thing.  So, my opinion is, if Paul had intended to use "head" to show the man was the "boss," he would never have used "kephale" at all. He would have used "arche." But he was very INTENTIONAL in not doing so. Why? Because he was saying something in a different ballpark altogether. So I'll simply state what that ballpark is that Paul was addressing as the finishing touches on this post. Mutuality of serving and meeting the needs of others is the clear subject in this passage when we are faithful to the text itself.

I'm convinced from my personal research on this passage that Paul was writing to elevate women to equal status with men in the same fashion that Jesus did in His ministry. Both men and women are called to serve each other in marriage and the man's way of doing that is by seeing himself, who was originally the source/beginnings from which woman was taken..remember the rib thing, serving his wife, as Jesus, who was the source/beginnings of the Church and loves her sacrificially. [We love Him because He FIRST loved us.]

It's profound to me that the word for wives serving [hupotassomenoi in verse 21] and the word for men loving [agapate in verse 25] have BASICALLY the same emphasis. To "look to the needs and concerns of the other." Serve and love. In simple terms biblically, "The wife serving is not something other than loving and the husband's loving is not something other than serving." So it is a mutuality of shared serving/loving that is at issue here for Paul. They are almost synonyms. In Jewish writings, a favorite technique was using synonyms in parallel form. You see this in the Psalms often.

Ps. 32:1 says..."Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. [Forgiven/covered]

Ps. 24:1 says..."The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein."

There is to be a mutuality in marriage according to Paul. The husband is no more to autonomously decide issues that face the family than the woman is to autonomously conceive the children that are born into a family.  

Neither loses themselves but willingly gives themselves for the other. This means a woman's serving/submission to a husband is never to be grounds for her experiencing a loss of her individual person in terms of thoughts, feelings, or even choices___ which would be more akin to a cult than to biblical Christianity___ just so___ a man's love/serving of his wife is to never lose the quality of Christ's love for the Church which was an unassuming kind that never demanded His own way. He love was kind, neither arrogant nor rude, and was voluntarily given___ as is the wife's submission/service to be.  

You talk about a new concept or idea and especially to those Ephesian Christians. Their whole culture was patriarchal and male-oriented. [Male-authority] The men in that society ran things whether it was the Jewish element or the Greek or Roman. Women seldom challenged it either. They had no individual or collective power to do so. 

But the gospel did challenge that. So that in Christ there is neither male nor female and here Paul is showing what that looks like in a serving way which flew in the face of the whole of that society. What's unbelievable to me is that some Christians try to use this very passage to continue to subject and control women as chattel property of the men. But to do THAT they have to READ INTO IT an authority that Paul was NOT intending.

By the way, while I'm in Paul the Apostle's ballpark, let me say also that the husband is not accountable for the spirituality of his wife either. Paul addressed that kind of false thinking when he said to the Roman Christians.."Every person will give account of himself to God." [Romans 14:12] He didn't say except for those that are married either. The man is never called upon in scripture to be an intermediary between his family and God or his wife and God, or anyone else for that matter. There is only one Intermediary [Prophet, Highpriest, and King] in the New Covenant and His name is Jesus, not the name of some one's husband.

As I said, it is tragic that the very passage where Paul brings to the early Church a unity and mutual servant hood in both the Church and the home has become the very passage that today's culture, both in and out of the Church, use to perpetuate a religious and cultural patriarchalism that Paul had learned through the Holy Spirit to despise and correct with Kingdom concepts.

Someone says..."But what about 1 Corinthians 11:3?"  We'll get to it eventually, but I promise you, since Paul wrote the first Corinthian letter from Ephesus where Paul was at the time, [57 AD]  he would neither mean anything different nor contradict anything he had already said to the Ephesians and now would say again in his letter to them now. [62 AD]

More on our scriptural map to male and female equality next time.

Paul B.